


Hydrosphere

by LtLJ



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-08
Updated: 2006-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLJ/pseuds/LtLJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's all about observation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hydrosphere

They step through the gate, and the first thing Rodney does is say, with a kind of weary resignation, "We're probably going to die."

They've been in Atlantis for only a month, and they're all still getting to know each other, but John knows Rodney well enough by now to realize this is just a knee jerk reaction to their surroundings, and not an actual warning.

It looks just like the images in the MALP's telemetry, and it looks nothing like it. The MALP showed them a cavern a little larger than the gate room, with artificial lighting, the floor smoothed flat with a material like concrete, and a couple of small wall consoles mounted on the rock, not unlike the ones used to control Atlantis' doors. The images didn't show that the rock is iridescent, that the solid dark gray captured by the MALP's fuzzy camera glitters in green and blue and other jewel tones and is just damp enough to reflect rainbows in the white light. The floor is more like a smooth clay, hard as glass. The air is warm and wet and salty, and only a little stale; it smells of the sea, but John can't hear the ocean, even distantly. It's intensely quiet. There's an archway carved out of the stone directly across from the gate, opening into a smaller cave.

"Really?" Ford asks, a little worriedly, because John hasn't responded to the "we're going to die" thing.

"No," John tells him. John's gotten pretty good at telling when Rodney is freaking out over nothing to blow off steam, and when Rodney is freaking out because you were about to die unless you listened to him.

Rodney, in fact, has already gotten over it and is on to business. "No large life signs. I'm getting flickers, as if there's a lot of small animal life somewhere nearby. And that's not a power source," he says, studying the detector. "It's bioluminescence."

John squints up at the lights. They're big globes, attached to the rocky uneven ceiling, glowing with a white pearly light. "Huh."

"That's weird," Ford says. They all look at Teyla.

"It is weird," she agrees, her eyes wary.

It's nice having a native guide, but the Athosians have never wanted to go to most of the places that they have to go now. And this is the first gate they've found underground.

John moves to the archway, letting the P-90's muzzle lead him, and score, the smaller cave isn't a cave, it's a T intersection. The wide round passage heads off to either side, each end curving away after about fifty yards. This is a relief, because they've already discovered that sometimes gates that look really intriguing actually lead to stupid places. There was the place now known as That Fucking Canyon, where they spent hours looking for the secret way out. When they finally brought Corrigan in, he had looked at the marks on the stone shelf for thirty seconds before saying, "Whatever it was, it was right here; it's gone now." John put that down as rule thirty-seven: if the way out of the gate well isn't immediately apparent, send for an archeologist now, not later.

Both ends of the passage look identical, so John heads left.

"This does not seem like a real cave," Teyla points out. Self-consciously, she adds, "That may sound strange--"

"No, I know what you mean," John tells her. It's not just the smooth floor; this cave is impossibly clean, and there's no sign of insect life, even gnats. And the artfully iridescent walls could be sculpture. "It's artificial."

"Even if it's been worked over by an interior decorator, it's still a cave," McKay says pointedly. "Caves are inherently dangerous. They're inhabited by...cave creatures."

He's right, but if there's something living in here that doesn't show up on the life signs detector, then it uses a litter box, because the floor is clean and the air smells of nothing but sea salt. "You know, McKay, we never talk anymore," John says. "It's nothing but, 'We're going to die' and 'Oh my God, what is that thing?'"

"This place feels empty," Ford points out, and John has to agree. It more than quiet, it's utterly still. As if nothing is moving, not even the air, anywhere in the range of their senses. "You're just paranoid, that's all."

"Paranoid about being eaten by an alien life form," McKay says, acidly thoughtfull. "Now I wonder how that happened. Where did I get that idea? Let me think. Wait, wait, I've almost got it--"

Teyla shakes her head. "Whatever happens, it cannot be as bad as last time."

John and Ford wince, and Rodney claps a hand over his eyes. "Oh God, don't say that."

Teyla lifts her brows at him, oblivious. "What?"

"It's bad luck," Ford explains with a grimace, "If you say that, it guarantees that it'll happen. It's tempting fate to screw you over."

Teyla stares around at them all. "Surely you do not actually believe...." She takes in their expressions. "Sorry."

The passage ends in a narrow foyer with a short flight of stone steps down to a round doorway. There's nothing covering the door, but the space beyond is dark. With Ford watching their six, John braces a hand on the gritty wall and leans down to shine the P-90's light through the open door.

McKay has his eyes on the detector and Teyla shifts to cover John, if something should pop out unexpectedly. John knows Teyla should hate him for showing up on Athos to activate the old Wraith-calling trap in her lost necklace, just lying there waiting for an Ancient gene to pick it up. Not to mention waking the other Wraith and bringing on the culling fifty years early. But for some reason he isn't ever going to understand, she doesn't. Unless her resentment is manifesting in the occasional overwhelming urge to smack him in the ass with her sticks while they're sparring. If so, he can handle that. And when he leans down to look into the opening, he's thinking he knows what she's thinking, and says, "You're not allowed to hit me when we aren't in the gym. That's an Earth rule."

She laughs, and McKay snorts quietly to himself.

The light isn't showing John anything but more cave. He moves down the steps, has one of those "poking head through doorway on alien planet" moments that are never comfortable. He can see it's a big round room, larger even than the chamber that holds the stargate, with several other archways leading off into open passages. As John steps inside, the white globes start to glow gently, and rainbows climb the rocky walls.

John follows their progress until he's looking straight up. The ceiling is a large green dome. Then something moves across it, a flicker of small silvery shapes, and John's eyes adjust and he realizes it's water. The dome is transparent and they're looking up into an alien sea or some other large body of water, and a school of fish is moving over their heads. He shares a startled look with McKay.

"This is incredibly cool," Ford says softly, stepping through the doorway behind them.

"It could be a lab, an observatory," Rodney says with an awed expression.

"Or a restaurant," John says. Rodney throws him a glare and he adds, "Come on. You were thinking that too."

"It is beautiful," Teyla says.

It's beautiful, but there's nothing here. There are a few other rooms off the main one, all with wall-sized observation ports out into the green water. One parallels the main chamber and seems to be thrust out from the body of the structure, its port running the whole hundred yard length of the wall. Through it they can see silvery schools of fish, multi-colored creatures like anemones or jellyfish, the shapes of rocks and what might be the edge of a coral reef, the occasional flick of a tail of something larger. It's not an enclosure, unless it's an enormous one.

But that's all there is. They got all excited about following the other end of the passage away from the gate cave, but it just loops around and leads back here, through an identical doorway. This place is just a series of beautiful rooms with underwater views, the whole not much bigger than the top floor of Atlantis' operations tower. If there was ever anything else here, it's gone now.

Still, it makes a nice change from the usual round of "Do you have any Ancient technology and if so, can we have it? If not, would you like to trade food for medical supplies or whatever random crap we can talk you into? Oh, and by the way, some idiots woke the Wraith and started the culling early, better watch out for that, and bye now." It's also a nice change from being chased or getting shot at.

After a while Rodney stops muttering about energy readings or the lack of them and digs out the camera. He's moving around the rooms, carefully filming everything. Trailing after him, John says, "You'd think there would be something like this in the underwater levels of Atlantis. Unless we just haven't found it yet."

McKay makes an erratic gesture, balancing the camera. "Yes, but there must have been something about the sea life on this planet, or specifically in this area, that the Ancients wanted to observe. Though it's odd there's nothing here for data collection."

John knows they should cross this address off and leave, but it's not often that they find anything this cool that doesn't come with a painful price tag, and they should at least get good DV of it.

John follows McKay for a while, but stops in the outermost room, the one with the longest wall port, caught by the limitless view of the water. There's a school of purple and blue jellyfish-things making a slow elegant progress along the window, and it's hypnotic.

The others follow McKay back along the passage into the main room, and he hears Teyla say, "I wish we could bring everyone in Atlantis, and all my people, here to see this."

"Maybe that's what it's for," Ford tells her. "Just to come here and enjoy it."

Maybe it is. The team researching the Ancient database thinks that before the Wraith, Pegasus was home to a bustling and peaceful intergalactic civilization. It's not inconceivable that they would build this place and put a stargate here just because it was convenient for looking at pretty fish.

The jellyfish continue their slow progress out of sight, and John pivots slowly for one last look before he leaves. And that's when he notices that there's something else on the other side of the glass, something looking back at him. He freezes, his chest suddenly tight.

It's -- she's -- floating in the water, inches from the glass. Her skin is a translucent green, blending with the color of the water, a narrow crest of hair drifting out in a blue cloud behind her. She's not as human as she looks at first shocked glance. Her head is too long, the wrong shape. Her eyes are big and almond-shaped but she doesn't have a nose, and her mouth is a thin line. She has fins instead of feet and there are some sort of jellyfish-like tendrils growing out from her arms and legs. She's definitely female; her breasts are small but they're in the right spot and there's no concealing hair at her groin.

John clicks his radio and manages to say evenly, "Ford, McKay, Teyla. You might want to see this."

He barely hears the acknowledgement. She's staring at him and he's staring at her. It's like that long enough for John to feel the unused adrenaline run cold down his back, for his heart rate to slow from fight-or-flight to wary tension. Then she lifts one long hand, each of the six fingers topped by an opalescent claw, and makes a "come closer" gesture.

John falls back a step instinctively, scanning the floor, scanning the ceiling, flicking a look behind him to make sure the nearest door hasn't sealed itself, because seriously. If there's an SGC how-to manual, there's a picture of this beautiful chamber and this beautiful creature, and a caption that basically says "don't fall for this."

She's gone still, as if she doesn't want to scare him away. There's no way she could see him well enough to read his suspicious squint, but maybe there is, because she lifts her other hand. She waggles her fingers, then slowly lifts her arms above her head. She twirls slowly, gracefully, fins and feelers and whatever they are drifting in the current, until she's facing him again.

She's just shown him that she's unarmed.

He taps the P-90, meaning _I'm not._

She waggles her fingers again.

He looks again but the rock is just rock, the glass is just glass -- or Ancient crystalline material that looks like glass. There's not even a wall console for the lights. If there's a way to flood the room, or for her to get in here or grab him from out there, it's carefully concealed.

_What the hell,_ John thinks. He takes one cautious step forward, then another, until he's barely a pace from the partition.

It's the weirdest thing ever. He's inches away from an alien being, but the glass gives him a strange feeling of security, like looking into the shark tank at an aquarium. Except maybe it's the other way around: he's the one in the tank, not her, and he's the one with the deadly weapon.

This close he can see that her skin isn't smooth; it's made up of tiny scales, and the green gleams silver when she moves. Her eyes are blue and it's hard to read expression there, but they aren't Wraith eyes. If he's not imagining it, the emotion there is intense curiosity.

Her fins lift her up a little, so she's looking slightly down at him. Then she raises her hand, slowly, as if trying not to startle him, and flattens it against the glass. Her claws don't click against the surface, as if the partition's substance doesn't transmit sound. Still caught up in the weirdness, he lifts his hand and presses it to the glass opposite hers.

Her head tilts and her eyes crinkle up in what might be a smile.

Then a shadow passes over the glass, something big moving in the upper water. Startled, John jerks back from the partition.

She's still watching him curiously but he figures suddenly that he's taken enough of a chance in the name of interspecies relations. He starts to back away. A glance over his shoulder tells him the others are here now, Teyla and Ford on either side of the doorway, aiming their weapons, Rodney standing with Teyla and aiming the camera.

John backs all the way to the door. Seeing he's not coming back, she drifts backward, her fins moving with easy languid strokes, until she's just a shape in the green haze.

Teyla's eyes are huge, and Ford is caught between worry and awe. "You okay, Major?" he asks.

"Yeah." John feels like he's coming out of a trance. He looks at Rodney. "Did you get that?"

Rodney nods, frowning in a preoccupied way at the camera's playback. "And I think that answers one question." He looks up, his mouth twisted in grim amusement. "This place wasn't built by humans to observe sea life. It's far more likely it was the other way around."

***

Walking back to the gate, they still have lots of unanswered questions. There's no power source here, no apparent means of communication between these chambers and the sea's inhabitants, so was there equipment that was removed at some point? Was this an embassy or just a tourist attraction for both species? It's not something they have time to deal with now; the biologists and the whole soft science division and especially Beckett will go crazy over the data, but more research here will have to be back-burnered until they deal with the problems of finding food and not getting eaten by the Wraith.

Rodney points out that though she was obviously a sentient being and seemed to know what the observatory was for, she wasn't carrying anything technological. Her species might have been attacked by the Wraith too, might have been bombed back into a pre-technological state the way every other human civilization they've encountered has.

John just figures that he made her day; she saw a living member of an endangered species.

  
**end**


End file.
